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Do you think you could make ends meet if you had an extra million dollars to spend in retirement? Bankrate.com figures that's how much more jingle you'd have in your jeans today if you had retired 14 years ago with the equity share of your $1 million portfolio in the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats. Those who retired a few years earlier would have another 190 grand on top of that.

Among the largest of large-caps, the aristocrats are the 50-plus members of the Standard & Poor's 500 that have not only paid dividends for the past 25 years, but also raised them every year. Bankrate.com's new study found that a 60/40 equity/bond portfolio of $1 million with the shares portion made up completely of aristocrat stocks beat five other common allocations over the past 14 and 20 years.

It really didn't matter how the pie was sliced or whether bonds or equities dominated. Aristocrat-oriented allocations left more cash for their owners in every scenario. For example, taking into account withdrawals, someone who retired in 2000 with $1 million would have $1,795,358 today—$957,330 more than if the equity portion was invested in S&P 500 stocks. Again, factoring in withdrawals, someone who retired in 1994 would have $1,146,707 more than with actively traded mutual funds.

"We started with $40,000 a year and increased withdrawals 3% annually to account for inflation," explains Bankrate.com's chief financial analyst, Greg McBride. Someone who retired in 2000 with $1 million could withdraw almost $59,000 in 2013 without jeopardizing his nest egg, while a retiree from 1994 would have $70,000 a year to spend.

Bankrate.com is a financial Website that provides consumers with mortgage and loan calculators, rate information, and shopping aids, and has studied everything from retirement to bank safety to insurance coverage since its founding in 1976.

The portfolio designs that Bankrate examined are pretty rudimentary but very common 60/40 combinations—three were predominantly stocks and three were predominantly bonds. Returns would vary based on the composition and maturity for the bonds and whether an investor bailed out on some holdings during tough times in the markets.

But the salutary effects of dividend stocks have been reaffirmed by many studies and his own tracking, says Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices, which manages the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat Index. Dividends have been adding about 3% a year to the total return of the S&P 500 index in recent years. For example, the S&P 500's price appreciation alone averaged 23.39% annually over the past five years, but 26.96% when dividends are added.

"COMPOUNDING REALLY supercharges that over longer periods," says Silverblatt. Dividends have accounted for about a third of investors' total return since 1926, and are very popular with cash-flush S&P 500 companies. Only 54 stocks make the aristocrat list.

But a full 420 pay dividends with an average yield of 2.01%. Dividenddetective.com's monthly newsletter is a good source of information on the sustainability of dividends.

"They have more than enough cash to sustain yields and just about any other kind of spending," says Silverblatt. These and voluminous other details of dividend investing are on the S&P Website (us.spindices.com/theme/dividends).

You've probably noticed that the stock market doesn't always perform as planned, and so the right strategy for the past 14 years won't necessarily be the best one in the next 14 years. "Past returns are no guarantee of future results," quips McBride.

But a dividend portfolio is, at the least, a sound step toward retirement security.